The Alliance's spokesman Niall Farrell was reported in one news account to have said it was time for Ireland to "re-embrace our traditional policy of neutrality", to close Shannon to the US and withdraw our soldiers from Kabul.

Pacifists opposed to the Taliban, or neutrality towards Islamic fundamentalism, are two of the more improbable philosophical positions one can take. Let me ask you this question. If the (hypothetical) Galway Alliance For War had had a phone call with a politician in Afghanistan, and had called for more US flights through Shannon, with an increase in Irish participation in the war in Afghanistan, would it have got nearly as much publicity as the Galway Alliance Against War regularly gets? Or, to shift our attention northwards to Mayo, do you think a ginger group as small and unrepresentative as the Shell to Sea group, called Yes To Shell, would ever get the publicity that the antis get?

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